


Exo Back Next Door: Episode 4

by ellieq_e



Series: Exo Back Next Door [4]
Category: EXO (Band), 우리 옆집에 EXO 가 산다 | EXO Next Door
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-13 18:27:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15370656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellieq_e/pseuds/ellieq_e
Summary: Everything is going great for the reunited couple Ji Yeon-hee and Park Chanyeol. That is, until a mysterious woman from Chanyeol’s past shows up and threatens to ruin everything…





	1. Stolen

_“Well, well, if it isn’t Park Chanyeol from Exo.”_

As the woman’s words lingered in the air, no one dared move a muscle, both Ji and Chanyeol waiting to see what she would do next. Although she was simply dressed in a black a-line skirt and a standard workingwoman’s white blouse, Ji thought that from this angle, she looked absolutely evil.

Finally the first to react, Chanyeol leapt up and attempted to grab the photo of him out of her hands.

“What do you want?” he asked her angrily as she swatted him away, clearly evading his attempted snatches despite his superior height on her. Clearly, she was no everyday paparazzi to be trifled with.

“Well, how about you sit down first and stop making a scene,” she replied calmly, looking him pointedly in the eye. They both knew that if he made another move, she could easily holler out, and considering the fact that she already knew his true identity, things did not bode well for him.

Defeated, Chanyeol sat down disgruntled, displeased but giving in to her demand.

“Good,” she curled her lips back into their reptilian smile, carefully slipping the photo into the protective case her petite assistant had produced for her and tucking it into her blouse. Out of the way and completely safeguarded from Chanyeol’s snatchy hands. _Why, she’s an evil genius_ , Ji marvelled to herself.

“So, now that that’s out of the way,” she stated efficiently, sliding the nearest chair over to their table so she could sit next to them. “Let’s get down to business.”

“So how much is it going to be? How many hundred thousand wons?” Chanyeol asked irritably, getting out his wallet to pay.

“Oh, no,” the woman stopped him. “It’s not that kind of deal, today. True, I am Meena Rhie, head editor of gossip magazine _KPop Today!_ ,” –at that, she puffed out her chest a little with pride. “But today’s matter is a more… _personal_ one.”

Meena Rhie cocked her head to the side at Ji and Chanyeol’s blank-eyed stares, or, as was in Chanyeol’s case, a grumpy and suspicious-looking, blank-eyed stare.

“Oh, Chanyeol!” her laugh tinkled like wind chimes, but even then, Ji thought there was some malice to it.

“You really don’t remember me?” she asked incredulously.


	2. Helpless

_You really don’t remember me?...It’s a personal matter_.

The mysterious woman’s words ran again and again through Ji Yeon-hee’s mind as she tried to make sense of just how, exactly, she had ended up alone on a Saturday morning, footing the bill for her unfinished second date with her maybe-boyfriend and long-awaited first love.

Everything had been going so well, she thought, smiling fondly at the bliss she had felt at being under the warm sunshine in Mama Lee’s peaceful, homey café. Before that mysterious woman had butted in, she had had everything she could possibly to be happy in this world: her lovely, handsome Chanyeol and a sweet, inexhaustible supply rice cakes that she could eat to her heart’s content. She had practically been in heaven.

And now, where was she? Why, only curled under a pile of blankets in bed as she listened to the sound of her brother making chopping noises on his kicking dummy in the yard outside and the melodramatic music of a muted Korean soap opera playing on the tv before her.

Ding! Dong!

“I’m coming!” she called at the door, half-heartedly wishing that it was Chanyeol who had returned to her side, but realistically having given up on that thought hours ago. Ever since their sudden parting at 11 that morning, he was nowhere to be found. Or rather, he had been stolen away by that mean, mean Meena Rhie, she thought, biting back an upset pout.

Listlessly, she pulled herself out of bed and trudged to the door, shuffling along with her blankets so she could do as little work while getting the most down-hearted sad slipper-shuffle noises.

When she opened the door, she was surprised to see the put-together form of her best friend Ga-eun waiting to greet her.

“It took you long enough!” she huffed as she pushed past her in through the door. “I understand you’re broken-hearted and confused, but unless there’s evidence otherwise, I don’t remember hearing that you turned into a snail,” her best friend joked, taking her arm and dragging her back to her room.

“So?” she said, cracking open a pint of Ji’s very favorite Baskin-Robin’s ice cream. Ji ‘s fingers reached for it, but Ga-eun held it just out of reach.

“Tell me everything,” she said.  
…  
“So you’re saying he just got up and left you in the middle of your date? With another girl? And that’s why you’ve fallen into this mushy mess lying in your bed all day?” Ga-eun ruthlessly repeated the facts that Ji had just told her back at her, not leaving out a bit to spare her feelings.

“Uh-huh,” Ji nodded through a mouthful of her Shooting Star ice cream. Mmmm. _At least Baskins-Robins loves me_ , she thought to herself, enamored with her eating.

“Hey! Earth to Ji Yeon-hee!” her best friend called to her, snapping her out of it. “You can’t fall apart like that just because a guy is being too foolish to see your amazingness! What happened to super star Ji Yeon-hee, future world-famous journalist?”

“Or Ji Yeon-hee, the bravest cleaner of the Park apartments?”

“Gee, thanks,” Ji replied sarcastically, her best friend’s pep talk losing steam.

“What I’m _saying_ ,” Ga-eun continued, getting back on track. “Is that you were an amazing girl before you met him, you are an amazing girl without him, and he is being a fool if he can’t see that.”

“Besides,” she added, tentatively playing devil’s advocate. “Don’t you think that him leaving also had something to do with the fact that was being threatened with the fact that she knows who he is and likely where he lives?”

Ji sniffed, forced to admit that her friend had a point.

“If you really want to know what happened after he left, I think that you should go over to his place right now and ask him about it directly.”

Ji looked up again, amazed at the insight her friend was giving.

“I mean, you said so yourself that he must care a lot about you to have let you keep his grandpa’s lost necklace, didn’t you?” she gestured at the silver treble clef that hung on a delicate chain around Ji’s neck.

“Well, if that’s the case, then I’m sure he will gladly explain what happened and promise to never, ever leave your side again if that’s what you want from him,” Ga-eun said confidently, giving Ji’s foot a playful tug.

In the process, Ji’s blanket, which had this whole time remained wrapped around its sulking owner, slid off and fell to the ground. Ji paused a moment, but didn’t reach down to reget it. Instead, she sprang into the arms of her very shocked and caught-off-guard best friend and buried her face in her hair.

“Oh, thank you, Ga-eun,” she said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Well…good,” Ga-eun said, not knowing what else to say. More than anything, she was surprised that her pep talk had actually worked on her famously painfully shy friend.

“Now, go on, then,” she gave her best friend a nudge out of bed, pulling the blankets away from her lest she change her mind and decide to burrow back in at any given second.

“Go see your man.”


	3. Chapter 3

7:57…7:58...7:59…

Chanyeol paced back and forth like a caged animal, hands behind his back and eyes darting back and forth between the hands of world’s slowest-moving clock and the panes of the world’s shiniest floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

So far, he had been in this office for 4 hours since Meena had brought him here, after an already long ride across the town in her black chauffeured car. Since then, he had been propositioned by Meena twice, called his agent once, and otherwise been left to rot on his own in this horrendously silent glass cube of a cage.

Waiting. That was what they had left him to do. Wait and be alone and be driven crazy and out of his mind.

Finally, as the clock struck 8:00, the familiar tip-tip-tapping of Meena’s shoes came down the hallway, reaching the door on the hour on the dot.

Click!

The handle turned, but he didn’t turn around, hating himself already for what he was about to say.

“So, do we have a deal?” Meena spoke first, the exact same words she had said every time she had visited him.

Slowly, he took a shaky breath before answering.

“Yes. Yes I agree to it,” he said.

…

Back at the apartment, it was already dark. Ji, who had finally gotten up the courage to go over and, as Ga-eun would put it, "see her man," had nodded off on the couch. The other members of EXO, who had returned to see their Incheon gal so peacefully drooling in her sleep, had tucked a blanket around her, but it was now in disarray due to all her restless tossing and turning.

“Chan…don’t leave me, Chan!” Ji called out in her sleep, reaching her hand out to stop her childhood friend. In her mind, she was back on her old playground, sitting on that familiar play structure with her face hidden in her hands and her feet swirling around in the woodchips.

“Chan…don’t leave me, Chan!” she called out again, reaching her hand out to the retreating form of the boy with a lopsided haircut. Suddenly, everything was black and she was no longer in the playground. She tried to run, but no matter how quickly her little feet moved, she couldn’t seem to get anywhere. She watched helplessly as the distance between her and the boy widened. “No! Chan!” she called out on the brink of despair.

And then, she fell silent, her hand clutching at the pendant around her neck and her body covered in a cold sweat.

…

When Park Chanyeol reentered his flat at 1 am in the morning, he was greeted by the sight of his disheveled (but still infinitely cute) Ji Yeon-hee curled up under a blanket on the couch, burying her face deeper and deeper into the cushions. Softly closing the door behind him, he tiptoed over to her sleeping form, only to see her sleeping face contorting into a look of pain. “Chan…don’t leave me, Chan!” she mumbled into the blanket.

“I’m here,” he wanted to say as he rested a hand on her shoulder; at his touch, her entire body seemed to relax, though her fingers never once left their hold on the pendant.

“There, there,” he pet her head, pausing a moment to take in just how beautiful she looked, even when she was sleeping.

“Did you miss me?” he almost thought to ask.

But, of course, he had already gotten his answer.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Episode 5 coming soon!


End file.
